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Drug therapy for anxiety in palliative care

Anxiety is a common symptom in patients near the end of life. As with other areas of palliative care, the majority of available literature pertaining to drug therapy for anxiety is based on the reporting of anecdotes. A search of the international literature for randomised clinical trials in the area of drug therapy for symptoms of anxiety in palliative care yielded no results. As a consequence, it is not possible to assess the effectiveness of treatment options. It is hoped that this review will motivate future research in this area.

Authors' conclusions:

There remains insufficient evidence to draw a conclusion about the effectiveness of drug therapy for symptoms of anxiety in adult palliative care patients. To date no studies have been found that meet the inclusion criteria for this review. Prospective controlled clinical trials are required in order to establish the benefits and harms of drug therapy for the treatment of anxiety in palliative care.

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Background:

This is an update of the review published on 'Drug therapy for anxiety in adult palliative care patients' in Issue 1, 2004 of The Cochrane Library. Anxiety is common in palliative care patients. It can be a natural response to impending death, but it may represent a clinically significant issue in its own right. It may also result from pain, or other untreated or poorly managed symptoms. When anxiety is severe or distressing drug therapy may be considered in addition to supportive care.

Objectives:

This review aimed to identify and evaluate randomised controlled trials examining the effectiveness of drug therapy for symptoms of anxiety in adult palliative care patients.

Search strategy:

We searched the following sources: CENTRAL (The Cochrane Library 2012, Issue 2), MEDLINE (1966 to 2012), EMBASE (1980 to 2012), CINAHL (1982 to 2012), PsycLit (1974 to 2000) and PsycInfo (1990 to 2012) for literature pertaining to this topic published in any language using a detailed search strategy.

We identified and excluded six studies using the original search strategy, with a further two studies being identified and excluded for this 2012 update. We therefore identified a total of eight potential studies but none met the criteria for inclusion in this review.

Main results:

No data were available to enable an assessment to be made of the effectiveness of drugs to treat symptoms of anxiety in palliative care patients.

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